Here’s a concern: if you make a tiny displacement car that meets the p/w requirements, how minmaxed would it have to be? As if the car couldn’t be modded to reach modded p/w due to significant starting tuning, it hampers competition.

Not minmaxed at all. Power needed to be usable is directly proportional to the weight of the car.
Edit: Since I’m filling the thread at this point, I’ll just edit this message and tag the people I’m responding to. Anyways, the mini was a perfectly usable car, and it had a pushrod 4 cylinder with engines starting at just 806cc.@Fido

I feel like minmaxing in this case is more going to be about the equipment, rather than the tuning. As if you’re putting all the best things on the car to utterly maximize efficiency, like a double-cam 4V fuel-injected American hatchback with 315mm rear, 255mm front tires and only basic seats with no safety or entertainment, the likes.

An original mini is crazy barebones internally and Alfa made a twin supercharger 1.6l making 220hp that was in a production vehicle. There’s precedent for production road cars in this era being pretty race car (while still race legal).

The Alfa Romeo GTA-SA “was a very rare racing car,” according to Wikipedia. This competition is not about racing cars, or cars derived from racing cars. It’s about taking stock vehicles and modifying them from the ground up. Anything that’s built like a touring car or anything else is still a high performance sports car or homologated car, and the rules for these are under Builder rules.

A minor question, but is rallye decoration desired? Number backgrounds, some additional lights, modern wheels/alloys possibly even? The cars are old, but I don’t know if their running condition can be modernized in ways that aren’t the engine or trim (besides those alloys, potentially)?

I already have my entrant ready, engine size adjusted to fit the theoretical new minimum, so at this point it’s all I can still consider.

Yes, I won’t go too in-depth as to why but they are banned even as a modification.

Fido:

A minor question, but is rallye decoration desired? Number backgrounds, some additional lights, modern wheels/alloys possibly even? The cars are old, but I don’t know if their running condition can be modernized in ways that aren’t the engine or trim (besides those alloys, potentially)?

Additional lights etc would be desired for modifications. But for the cars being auctioned, its best to leave them stock.

Perhaps, instead of trying to figure out a set of rules that encompass every car you are looking for, maybe you could create three (or so) classes for cars to fall into, based on vehicle weight. That way, you could include cars like a Mini in one class, and those “abysmal American hatchbacks” can fall into another category. Just a thought.

Ruleset updated! All that’s left is to sort out the calculator, create some courses for the vehicles to run on, and a few other probably minor things to sort out and we’ll soon be good to go!

Edit:
I’m still looking for a reasonably priced car. If you think you can create a good enough reasonably priced car to be used in this challenge, feel free to send it to me on Discord (Lily#8831) or by PM’ing me here on the forums.
My criteria for a reasonably priced car:
Must cost 20-28k, must have a manual transmission, have four-doors, and gets reasonable gas mileage (Above 22).If yours gets chosen, the manufacturer of said reasonably priced car will be listed as an official sponsor for the A10KCCAR.

And, the calculator is going to be cancelled, since this is a First-price sealed-bid auction, all cars will now start at roughly $2000(TBD not final lol).